The Ravens performance thus far has been disappointing, and their effort has been atrocious. There is no excuse in the world which justifies the results we have seen so far this season. However, I stumbled upon an interesting tidbit of information about the Ravens schedule this year. This is not an excuse at all, but it is interesting that the league has done something for the Ravens TWICE when scheduling that they have not done for any other NFL team:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">In the past 16 years, just 2 NFL teams have opened a season w/ 5 of their first 7 games on the road: 2000 Ravens & 2015 Ravens</p>— Patrick Gleason (@PMGleason) <a href="https://twitter.com/PMGleason/status/656498906973376513">October 20, 2015</a></blockquote>
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As they say, you can only play who is on your schedule. And that includes the where. The Ravens have no excuse for their current state; they should have at least 3 wins at this point of the season. The fact that they do not is their own fault, and they even held leads in most of their losses. All of them were narrow losses, which just shows that they have been unable to maintain leads.
The scheduling is just a side point, but an interesting one nonetheless. This is a hard season to be a Ravens fan (or writer), but hopefully next year we will be able to take our high draft pick and our easier schedule and peer down from our perch atop the standings and laugh about this season!